Printable solar cells that can be folded up when not in use

Here’s a photovoltaic cell that can be printed onto paper. The manufacturing technique is almost as simple as using an inkjet printer. The secret is in the ink itself. It takes five layers deposited on the paper in a vacuum chamber. But that’s a heck of a lot easier than current solar cell fabrication practices. In fact, is sounds like the printing process is very similar to how potato chip bags are made. This is significant, because it could mean a fast track to mass production for the technology.

It isn’t just the easy printing process that excites us. Check out the video after the break where a test cell is placed on top of a light source while being monitored by a multimeter. It’s been folded like a fan and you can see a researcher sinch up the cell into a small form for storage. It’s a little counter-intuitive; for instance, you wouldn’t want to make a window shade out of it because it would have to be down during the day to get power. Be we think there’s got to be some great use for these foldable properties.

59 thoughts on “Printable solar cells that can be folded up when not in use”

Car windows might be good, though I don’t know what you’d use the energy for.
Even discounting the flexible properties, if they can make these easily and cheaply enough then maybe more houses could get solar energy to assist and lower their electric bills.

Perhaps I was the only one, but I thought having the cells charging a storage battery was a given in the auto applications suggestions.Possible less fuel would be used in some applications. Particularly if used along side exhaust heat thermoelectric current generators

Oh yeah, and it’d be good for HAM radio operators who want something easy to store and use during emergencies or while hiking or something. Assuming the sun is out when they want to use it. Could be a charger for a portable battery.

I am blown away by this. I hope that these new cells go into full production and are distributed throughout the world. They are truly revolutionary compared to what I have seen before. I’m imagining people in small African villages (just for example) hanging sheets of these cells on their walls and roofs to power refrigerators, lights, radios, and whatever else; an opportunity they may not have had otherwise. Truly amazing.

That said, the video shows voltage, nor amperage, which would be a better measurement for the power that it generates.

But even if this is far weaker than silicon wafer solar cells, it must be vastly faster and cheaper to make, which is what’s really important. Interesting to see would be the cost per watt comparison with other types of solar cells.

Something seems off there for me too. That is why I added the “if this is correct” comment. If you look closely at the text embedded in the video, there is a MINUS sign in front of the exponent, which I did not take into account. That would make it a 80 mW per “square root centimeter” instead of 80mW per cm. Extending that out, it would be 800 W per “square root meter”.

Rob, your math is still off. A negative power indicates division. So it is 80mw per square centimeter. Its no different than writing 80mW/cm². The reason its done is the / notation can be really ambiguous when you have multiple /.
:) so no need for imaginary power…yet…

“At present, the paper-printed solar cells have an efficiency of about 1 percent, but the team believes this can be increased significantly with further fine-tuning of the materials.”
Looks promising, but not useful yet.

I agree that it is not currently useful, but there is a big list of companies that missed out by saying, “No, our current format will never be replaced by this new FOO technology, or that BAR format.”

My personal favorite is Kodak. They had an oppurnitity to get into digital way back in the beginning (back in the sub-one-megapixel days IIRC). They thought that digital would NEVER replace paper. That was also before “everyone” was online (dialup at that time), but if a technology EXISTS AT ALL, it will improve. If it doesn’t, it is because it dies, or is killed by another, “better” tech.

When the mp3 format came out, no one thought it would enable people to carry the music of ten pounds of CDs in something that could be hidden in a package of gum. Most people can not understand the difference between not possible NOW, and not possible EVER.

If Moore’s Law applies, and we use Rob Wentworth’s figures (below) of 10W/m^2, or 1mW/cm^2 maximum, we have a theoritical range of 40-50W/m^2 in about three years. And that would be on the order of 500W/m^2 by 2020. 40W/m^2 would translate to plenty of charging capacity for personal electronics from your school backpack. Never worry about a dead laptop with a full-sized camping backpack. If the technology can be adapted to work on asphalt shingles, the first company to do it safely will only have to worry about buyouts.

The technology exists. Unless they come up against fundamental (or legal) limitations, this should be in consumer products within three to five years.

So, at optimal insolation (1kW/sqM), these would produce 10W per square meter, not the 800W that were being calculated above. Generic production panels produce ~140W per square meter. They have a very long way to go.

What this could be used with is those sun screens that people put on their windshield so their steering wheel does not get hot. What some one could do is rig the cars ventilation system fan by adding a wire so that the fan can get power from a different source and run that wire under the dash to the bottom of the drivers side pylon (the bar that holds the windshield and the roof). When the driver puts the sun screen on, they would attach the wire to it and the sun screen would create power to run the fan and possibly keep the car a little cooler.

Also, instead of a ‘/’ showing division, they have a dot. They must be measuring the dot product of 80mW and an imaginary square centimeter. Something went awry during video post processing… ;-(

Going by the 1% figure and 1KW/m^2 max solar exposure, it cannot be more than 10W/m^2, or 1mW/cm^2 maximum. So, realistic measurements should be in the 10s or 100s of microwatts per square centimeter. Perhaps they meant 80 microwatts, but the video editor changed the letter mu to an m…

I think many people here are missing the point. Here you have a solar cell that can be manufactured cheaply, shipped in standard mailing tube anywhere in the world, set up on any surface, and is surprisingly durable.
Who cares if it’s only 1% efficient? Who cares how efficient it is at all, for that matter, surely the efficiency will improve as the manufacturing process improves over time. These cells have advantages that NO OTHER materials can match. That’s what is important.

What is with this obsession with folding things. Useless. No glass cover, goes to pot in months. Solar energy can do more than generate electricity. It can unzip bonds and peel sealings, and mutate life.
I have said for 3 decades that PV should be in the form of shingles, kill two birds with one stone.
The last thing we need is disposable PV ‘fans’ ‘flowers’ or any other gimick. Curved panels are just another gimick, some part is always getting poor exposure. Houses on north-south streets should not face the street but the sun.

Really good to see. Now all that is needed is for a multicell that works simultaneously at multiple frequencies. Imagine cells that could generate power from absorbed radio, IR, and UV as well as some visible light. My money is that the tech already exists for radar frequencies.

Stating the obvious nothing is immortal. While I didn’t have solar PV arrays up to be damaged, I experienced two destructive hail storms this past Summer. Biodegradable could be good thing sometimes in regards to PV. Oh; I forgot the PV on one of the solar path lights got busted up.

“It’s a little counter-intuitive; for instance, you wouldn’t want to make a window shade out of it because it would have to be down during the day to get power. Be we think there’s got to be some great use for these foldable properties.”

Isn’t the whole point to keep the heat out during summer and the heat in during winter?
This is absolutely inverse to what air conditioners do!!!

solar blinds: provide power in summer nothing in winter.
air con: uses power in summer nothing in winter.